During the regal government, some contest arose on the exaction of an illegal fee by Governor Dinwiddle, and doubtless there were others on other occasions not at present recollected. It is supposed that these are not sufficiently interesting to a foreigner to merit a detail.
The petition of the Council and Burgesses of Virginia to the King, their memorial to the Lords, and remonstrance to the Commons in the year 1764, began the present contest: and these having proved ineffectual to prevent the passage of the stamp act, the resolutions of the House of Burgesses of 1765 were passed, declaring the independence of the people of Virginia on the Parliament of Great Britain, in matters of taxation. From that time till the Declaration of Independence by Congress in 1776, their journals are filled with assertions of the public rights.
The pamphlets published in this State on the controverted question were:
1766. An Enquiry into the Rights of the British Colonies, by Richard Bland.
1769. The Monitor's Letters, by Dr. Arthur Lee.
1774. A summary View of the Rights of British America.[1]
—— Considerations, &c., by Robert Carter Nicholas.
Since the Declaration of Independence this State has had no controversy with any other, except with that of Pennsylvania, on their common boundary. Some papers on this subject passed between the Executive and Legislative bodies of the two States, the result of which was a happy accommodation of their rights.
To this account of our historians, memorials, and pamphlets, it may not be unuseful to add a chronological catalogue of American State-papers, as far as I have been able to collect their titles. It is far from being either complete or correct. Where the title alone, and not the paper itself, has come under my observation, I cannot answer for the exactness of
- ↑ By the author of these notes.
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